


ever living ghost (of what once was)

by WeWalkADifferentPath



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 4 Years Later, Character Study, Dissociation, Five is still struggling after everything is over, Five speculates on the concept of suicide, Gen, Healing, Klaus likes osso bucco, Movie Nights, Overstimulation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Social Anxiety, Trauma, but it'll take more time than he expects, he's trying to be a person again, of course, okay ending anyways, somewhat happy ending?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-27 00:38:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18293339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeWalkADifferentPath/pseuds/WeWalkADifferentPath
Summary: Fucking Klaus, and his using all of the toilet paper, and his oh Five, if you’re going out, I would just love to have the ingredients to make this osso bucco, you know, like that guy I once dated, when I was living on his couch, because I was homeless, you know..Four years after the apocalypse is averted, Five takes a regular trip to the grocery store.





	ever living ghost (of what once was)

**Author's Note:**

> hey y'all. have however many words of essentially Five character study, because I just got home from the grocery store and I have a lot of feelings. 
> 
> As the notes say, there's PTSD symptoms here, including dissociation, and while Five is not suicidal, there is a brief section where he speculates on suicide and his opinion of it isn't entirely kind. So be safe and take care of yourselves. xx
> 
> title is from Band of Horses- No One's Gonna Love You

Five still isn’t used to grocery stores.

Not like this, anyways. In the post-apocalyptic landscape, grocery stores were just as much rubble as everything else had been. They’d been places to scavenge, places of desperation and hope when he’d still had such trivial whims. After the first decade or so, they’d been not much good for anything, as expiration dates and the natural passage of time drove everything further and further into decay. 

And before that, as a child, Five had never been to a grocery store before. They had been to plenty of other public buildings-- schools and churches and movie theaters and restaurants, when there were shootings or robberies or just to sneak out with his siblings-- but never a grocery store. 

Five had always wanted to go, even just because he hadn’t liked to not know about things, but he’d never gotten the chance. 

Now, even after four years worth of visits, the vast array of foods and colours and people is absolutely dizzying, and he sort of regrets that wish. 

Fucking Klaus. Fucking Klaus, and his using all of the toilet paper, and his _oh Five, if you’re going out, I would just love to have the ingredients to make this osso bucco, you know, like that guy I once dated, when I was living on his couch, because I was homeless, you know.._

Fucking Klaus. Never mind that if Five pulled his trauma cards out like that, he’d certainly win. Oh, you got to eat osso bucco? I ate cockroaches. Oh, what does a couch look like again? I’d forgotten, after 45 years of rubble. 

But he doesn’t do that, because he’s not an idiot, and besides, if he’s being honest it’s probably good for Klaus to be babied sometimes. Five has never had expectations about being cared for. Not even as a literal child. But Klaus has always been a little bit more fragile, a little more willing to bend and break for affection, a little more hopeful and consequently more vulnerable. 

Thus why Five is in the grocery store on a goddamn Saturday afternoon. 

Thank fuck for self check-out. Small mercies, in this world. He drags his basket over, fumbling with the toilet paper and wishing that it wasn’t so bulky, or at least for a wagon to pull behind him. He hates the stupid check out machines and their stupid voices and the heat on the back of his neck as he has to face away from a whole store full of people but at least he’s almost done. 

“Excuse me,” a voice says behind him. Five’s brain makes the decision to dissociate so that he doesn’t whirl around and kick the woman’s heels out from under her. “Excuse me, we have a brand of toilet paper on sale for $3.99, and the one you’re purchasing is $7.99.” 

The woman, a kindly, tired looking older lady, pinches her face in a dissatisfied expression. 

“I wouldn’t want you spending any extra money that you don’t need to.” 

Five almost rolls his eyes at her. Money is the literal least of his family’s worries. Then again, he knows how he must look to her, in baggy school boy shorts in the middle of March, a worn out coat, a seventeen year old face. 

Clean shaven, too, because the daily ritual is calming, but also because of the way that he feels safer every time he catches his reflection in a mirror and he doesn’t look like the person he was back _then._

Goddammit, he really is the least conspicuous person. He seems to attract maternal instinct like a beacon. 

“Oh, that’s alright ma’am,” he tells her mildly. 

But she shakes her head. “No, it’s really no worries. Give me one second here and I’ll run and get it for you.”

She taps away at the self-checkout machine for a second, canceling the paper that he’d already scanned, and it occurs to him that she’s far too close into his space but that he doesn’t exactly care. Somewhere in his mind he knows that he’s dissociating, but he’s unable to care, and unable to fix it in any case. So he watches, detached, as he flushes, as he stutters, as she finally steps away and taps another sales associate on the shoulder, holds up the toilet paper, and the man disappears. 

The machine is beeping at him. _Please wait for assistance. Please wait for assistance._

Five feels like he’s floating. 

She comes back what must be a few minutes later with a regretful expression. “Sorry,” she says, “we must have just sold out. I was just trying to save you some money, yeah? Well, maybe next time.” She’s holding the toilet paper that he’d started out with.

“That’s okay,” he tells her. God, even floating like he is, he wants to say something poignant. Something to let her know how kind she is. How she’s a gift in this world, and a rare one at that. How she didn’t deserve to die the first time around and how hopefully this time, she’ll have many more years ahead of her. 

But of course he can’t say that. So he just adds, “that was very kind of you,” and scans the paper for the second time. _Please wait for assistance_ disappears as he presses finish. 

He scans his card, grabs his bags, and doesn’t look back for the woman on the way out the door.

It’ll be quite some time before he comes back to himself. He’s sweating, and a hot flush of shame floods through him-- because grocery shopping should not be this _hard,_ having a small conversation with a nice stranger should not be this hard-- but it’s not enough to ground him. He’ll be floating for a while, and although he knows that he’ll be mad about it later, for now he’s not worried about it. 

The day is rainy. There’s a chill in the air but the humidity blurs the horizon, and water seems to be trickling off of everything, into storm drains, into puddles that he can’t seem to avoid. 

The parking lot is a field of landmines. It always has been. Cars are awful, foul beasts when they can move, when they aren’t just places to live in. He likes it better when he’s behind the wheel of one, though, not a pedestrian, where he’s vulnerable to be hit at any second by any one of the idiots driving them. 

People are all so ignorant. Unaware of how fragile life is until it’s taken from them. 

There’s a stream just off the side of the lot, almost on his way home. Though Five doesn’t want to go to it-- knows that it’ll be too much noise for him-- his feet draw him there anyways. The bridge is objectively beautiful, a bright red in the field of greys and browns, but he doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel it under his feet as he steps onto the wood. Doesn’t hear anything but the water, and he knows that he’s floating higher, but it’s like a perverse sort of punishment that he’s drawn to stand here regardless. 

Irrational, irrational, irrational. These ticks are weaknesses. But Five doesn’t care right now. 

One side of the water is smooth and near still, the other pulls into rapids over the rocks, and the contrast makes him dizzy all over again. How fascinating, that a river, the most connected stream of movement, can change shape so rapidly. Just in the span of a man-made bridge. 

A dog barks in the distance. A woman responds with a weary _hush, stupid mutt._

Five watches the water flowing beneath him, relentless and unceasing. He wonders if anyone has ever tried to jump. If they had they wouldn’t have died. 

_Humans are so stupid in their limited perception of things._

Five has an uneasy sort of relationship to the concept of suicide. He’s resentful of it, certainly; probably mostly because he never had that choice. It’s not jealousy per se, but something similar, something thicker, angrier and more resigned at once. 

Suicide is a nonsensical, cowardly choice, and Five won’t waste time worrying about whether or not it’s the choice that he would have taken had he actually been afforded it. 

Instead he turns, exiting the bridge in two long strides, and heads back onto the path to the Academy. The trees as he passes are still dead, though winter is long over, and life is beginning to creep back into the world. Not that it ever left entirely. Life is resilient at the worst of times; it was a constant that never quite left him entirely in the apocalypse either, although back then it was much more limited. Now, there’s green etching in around the edges of this picture, mushrooms growing up a tree, birds making noise in the background. 

It’s a lot of stimulation. He hates it, but he can’t tune it out either, because it lets him know that he’s not back there. 

A woman appears at the mouth of the path, fuzzy at first in the smog and then getting clearer as she gets closer. She’s jogging, headphones in and expression focused, and as she nears Five can hear her breathing. It’s steady. The breath of a runner. Big draw in, panting exhale out. 

Like a panic attack. Or the sound of someone bleeding out. 

She squeezes by him and he has to stop himself from jumping just to avoid sharing space but it’s over in a moment and then he’s back to the silent cacophony of nature. He realizes that he can’t hear himself breathing and pauses to suck in a breath, trying to make it loud and slow, but it doesn’t quite come out that way. Most of the time it doesn’t. 

He’s getting physically tired now and he can feel it in the ache of his limbs, the heaviness of his body. It’s a familiar feeling, but so to is the resolution to push through it anyways, to let his mind draw back even further so that he doesn’t have to feel it. He’s almost home. 

As he rounds onto his street, there’s a young man smoking a cigarette out on his stoop and they make eye contact for a moment. It electrifies something in Five’s blood that he ignores; there are no assassins here. No reason to be afraid. The man waves at him absently and then pulls in another draw before dropping the cigarette onto the ground and stubbing it out with his toe. 

“Fool,” Five mutters. 

Does the boy not realize how frequently fires happen because of that very carelessness? He’s a _child,_ though he’s physically older than Five. This boy doesn’t know how quickly and willingly the whole world can burn. 

“Sorry?” the kid asks. Five shakes his head. 

“Might want to be more careful with those smokes.”

The kid snorts. “Whatever, grandpa.”

Accurate, Five thinks. He could be this kid’s grandfather. It’s a twisted sort of irony and it actually makes Five smile, knowing that he’s the only one in on the joke. 

When he gets to the door he takes a second longer than necessary with his keys. He’s always reluctant at this part of things-- transitions are hard, and as much as he hadn’t wanted to leave, now it feels wrong that he’s returned already. But it would be stupid to just stand outside on the stairs so he enters, ignoring the sudden wave of coolness and drop in humidity that makes it clear just how thick the air had been outside. 

He drags his bags to the kitchen, feeling in every step how his brain is pulling further and further back. Remnants of a time when he’d needed to tune out his pain quickly in order to move forward, and though it’s not needed now, he hasn’t quite figured out how to turn it off. 

Klaus says it’ll go away with time. Five doesn’t believe him, because as far as he can tell, it’s hasn’t gone away for Klaus either, so what the hell does he know? 

“Hey,” Allison says, popping her head into the kitchen. He doesn’t turn to look at her. “Thanks for picking those things up for us. You didn’t have to.” 

Allison, for all of her lovely qualities, is absolutely not subtle. He finds himself bristling. 

“I’m perfectly able to pick up groceries.”

“I know,” Allison says, and her voice has softened into something concerned and pitying. “I know you can, Five. I just meant that we could have done it later with the car, you know?”

Five shrugs, shoving the box of crackers into the cupboard. “Well, it’s done.”

“We’re having a movie night tonight,” Allison says, slowly and carefully enunciating each word. “You’re welcome to join us.”

He’s grateful enough that she hasn’t phrased it like a question-- do you want to join us?-- that he turns around, finally taking her in and letting her see him. She takes him in in turn with a cautious appraisal, more than likely noting his wet socks, the tiredness that he can’t disguise, the clothes that weren’t warm enough for the weather. 

But she doesn’t say anything. Just smiles at him. “See you at 7, if you decide to come.” And then she’s gone, and Five can breath again. 

He loves his siblings, he really does. And after the past four years together he can’t deny that things move much more smoothly than they ever used to. He’s not as closed off anymore, or at least he’s trying not to be. But god, it’s exhausting. Each day it’s exhausting. 

He needs a nap already. 

As soon as the groceries are all shelved, he pulls on the fluffy pair of socks that Klaus had knitted for him for Christmas last year and turns on his electric blanket. The door to his room is firmly closed but not locked, just in case, always just in case, and he crawls under the blanket with a sigh. 

7pm is at least three hours away, so he’s got time. 

As he closes his eyes and falls into the drag of sleep, he tells himself that he’s getting better. This time there won’t be nightmares. This time he’ll wake up feeling refreshed. This time he’ll spend the night with his siblings, and he won’t be weird or stand-offish or terse or dissociated halfway to hell. He’ll have a nice night, with just the thinnest layer of dissociation to take the edge off, and then he’ll be back in bed, just like this. 

Yeah, he’s getting better. One day at a time.


End file.
